BLAH

WHEN WE WERE MARKS

For those of you with an interest in the so-called creative process of
writing these columns (and so far no one's telling me to stop), and in the
interest of full disclosure, I am writing this column Thursday afternoon on
the train from Montreal to Toronto that I am taking to attend WrestleMania
weekend. When I had originally committed to CRZ to do this column on a more
regular basis, (although to be fair it was more like I hinted that I might
do it and he didn't immediately rush to discourage me), I had three columns
in mind heading up to WrestleMania. Three columns that I hoped would
summarize all of my ol' skool frustrations with the WWF. The three columns
that I had intended to write before WrestleMania were The Psychology of the
Punch, What If Jacques Rougeau Jr. Was Right All Along?, and In Angle I
Trust. Somehow, I ended up deciding (not without some trepidation) that the
series needed an introduction which is when Tribute came
boiling out of my sub-conscious. Similarly, my article about time limit draws
spun off from my Rougeau article. AND the following article came about as a
result of a crack that someone made about my article on time limit draws.

So, if you'll sneak with me into the TARDIS, I'll set the coordinates for
the Deep South in the time of the NWA, as we Once Again, return to a Time
when Men were Men and we wore onions on our belts, which was the style of
the time; a Time when Karlos was still a Fox; a Time when Ricky Morton was
still learning to play Ricky Morton; A Time in short: When We Were Marks.

WHEN WE WERE MARKSBringing Back Tag Ropes

I do think that bringing back the time limit would baffle and confuse the
audience and it's probably be seen as a step backwards... like, say,
bringing back tag ropes
- Karlos the Jackal

I have a mental picture, a synaptic snapshot, a memory watercolor, if
you will. It is of an event that may never have happened, a match that may
be a fantasy of mine, and even if the bout did take place, the moment that
I'm remembering may never have occurred, may be imaginary.

The scene is a small community arena in Georgia or North Carolina. The
arena is packed with a crowd howling with anger and furiously out for blood,
literally pounding on the barricades in frustration. On the far side of the
ring, Robert Gibson has a tag rope clenched in his fist and is straining
forward as far as he can stretch, nearly yanking the rope out of the turn
buckle in his fury On the near side of the ring, Tully Blanchard is standing
in the ring, taunting Gibson (and distracting the referee) while Arn
Anderson stands on the ring apron and nonchalantly strangles a struggling
Ricky Morton with his tag-rope.

"So what?" you may well ask. It's not that different a scene that you
might see in any WWF tag match, the baby-face watching his heel opponents
double-team his partner. The only element that you wouldn't see in the WWF
to-day is the tag ropes. But they are a silly and irrelevant anachronism
aren't they? A meaningless relic of the past with no bearing on the sorry
shambles that is the present-day tag-team division. It's not like the tag
ropes were important. Right! Right? Well, yes, they were important.

Now, I don't claim to be an expert on the history of the tag ropes. I
don't know when they were first used, although I suspect that Toots Mondt
was involved, and I'm not sure when they were last used. In fact, I have no
clear recollection of them being used in either the Atlantic Grand Prix or
the Calgary Stampede, meaning that they either were not used at all or were
not used in a psychologically compelling way (which amounts to the same
thing really.) I suspect that the tag-ropes were an invention or innovation
of Southern tag-team wrestling, a sub-species of wrestling that I admire for
its psychological complexity even if, again, I'm no expert on the subject.
None of which means that I can't admire the psychological brilliance of the
tag-rope as a prop, or bemoan its passing, its abandonment by an industry
hell-bent on abandoning wrestling for sports-entertainment, in the process
trashing the most entertaining parts of its past.

To me, wrestling is a way of telling a story. Anything that helps to
construct a believable story is, by definition, a good thing. When those
things can be added to a match organically that makes the addition all the
better. To explain what I mean by organic, think of the difference between
the traditional drag your opponent around the arena hardcore match and a
Mankind Boiler Room match. In the former, since the pin can take place
anywhere, all of the running around can seem forced and artificial,
reminding us that what we are watching is fake. In a Mankind Boiler Room
match, on the other hand, you have a location for the match that springs
naturally from Mankind's character, since the Boiler Room is his sanctuary,
his lair, his favourite environment. Because the match takes place in a
Boiler Room, all kinds of improvised weapons are naturally available. And
since the rules of the match are that the first person to get to the ring
from the Boiler Room wins, all the running around which distracts one in a
regular hardcore match, here occur naturally. The difference between the two
kinds of matches works as a metaphor for the WWF's problems, if you like.
The WWF has kept the formula for what happened during a boiler room match
and applied it to its hardcore matches, while losing the reason for WHY it
happened. Without the reason, the formula is a stale imitation of reality
that distracts us from enjoying what we are watching, rather than a
reflection of reality that drags us into the match engrossing us in what we
are seeing.

Tag ropes were, they are, a natural organic way of helping to tell the
story that you are trying to tell in a tag team match. Start with how the
two teams hold the tag ropes. The babyface team grips the rope as if it were
a lifeline, gripping it in their fist, pulling on the rope as they lean away
from the turn buckle. On the other hand, the heel team, if they bother to
hold the tag ropes at all, do so nonchalantly and disdainfully. Sometimes
they hold the rope in the palm of their hands, sometimes they merely grip it
with their pinky finger, and sometimes they only pick it up just as a tag is
made. Just by how they hold the tag ropes, the baby-faces communicate their
commitment to the rules, how tightly they are bound to those rules, and how
fiercely in turn those rules grip them. The baby-face can no more relinquish
his hold on the tag ropes than he can relinquish his grip on the rules of
fair play. He could let go of the tag ropes, but then he would no longer be
a baby-face. By contrast, the heels demonstrate their disregard for the
rules and how much they disdain them by how loosely they hold the tag ropes.
In fact, their total disrespect for the rules is demonstrated by the way
that they pervert the rules by using the tag ropes as a weapon.

Finally, the tag ropes give a dramatic demonstration of the dynamic
inherent in most tag-team matches. As Robert Gibson, is straining away at
the ropes, he is demonstrating a principle of physics known as potential
energy. When you store a book on a shelf, the higher the shelf and the
heavier the book, the more potential energy is stored in the book. When the
book falls off the shelf that potential energy is transformed into kinetic
energy. If a paperback novel is on the bottom shelf, you'll barely notice it
when it hits your foot, but when the condensed Oxford English Dictionary
falls off the top shelf, onto your foot, you might break a toe. This
principle of physics is usually understood on a primal level by most people,
even if they couldn't explain the math behind it. When Robert Gibson strains
at the tag rope, we, the audience, understand on a primal level, that
potential energy is being stored and coiled up like a spring, and that this
energy can only achieve its violent release as kinetic energy when Ricky
Morton finally makes his way across the ring to make the tag. In the same
way, our emotions are coiled up waiting for their violent release with that
dramatic tag.